This topic may be a sensitive one for many readers.
As a relatively recently bereaved gardener, I can’t help ruminating on why it has to be so difficult to plant or even lay flowers, shrubs or trees at or on the resting places of our loved ones. Surely this is one of the most meaningful, practical and universal applications of the gardening impulse known to humankind.
Can it be that those in charge of cemeteries are so concerned with the convenience and right-of-way of their mowers and weed-whackers that they cannot permit, much less encourage, memorial plants or floral tributes as a rule? Cemeteries seem to have so many arcane, draconian, unclear or unequally applied policies governing “foreign” plant matter brought in by family and visitors.
Do they try to understand that it is way beyond rude and frustrating to have a harmless flowerpot removed from a gravesite after a scant week – just because they have scheduled a “sweep?” Have they no compassion for the grieving, or horticultural sympathy in their souls?
It is nice to know that there are cemeteries where grave gardening is actually encouraged, such as The Woodlands in my home town of Philadelphia. But as their “clientele” is mostly from prior centuries, the plot-tenders are not necessarily acquainted with those they honor.
When it comes time to decorate the resting place of our own flesh and blood, perhaps we approach it differently. Perhaps we take great care and place great meaning onto the plantings we are denied; and take commensurate umbrage when we are reduced to placing fake flowers at the headstone of a great plantswoman who would hate the very thought of such sacrilege.
At the cemetery where my mother is buried, I am taking some solace in the gorgeous manifestations of magnolia blossom currently adorning the grounds (as seen above) and blanketing the often bare, raw earth with rosy petals. At least for a few days out of the year she will have a real floral tribute that is more fitting than the cemetery’s rule book ordinarily allows.
Cemetery rules preclude a gardener’s memorial originally appeared on GardenRant on April 11, 2025.
The post Cemetery rules preclude a gardener’s memorial appeared first on GardenRant.
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